Why Your Happiness Should Come First
Like oxygen on an airplane, you can’t help others until you help yourself.
March 20th, 2021 honors International Day of Happiness which recognizes that progress should be about increasing human happiness and wellbeing, not just growing the economy. Many prefer to focus on boosting productivity and success rather than positive emotions. Or perhaps they tried to become happier but always seemed to get leveled by setbacks. Why keep trying? Keep reading to find out three reasons why your happiness should come first.
A Happy Person is a Healthier Person
Being happy promotes a healthier lifestyle. According to Healthline, happiness boosts the immune system, helps combat stress, protects your heart by reducing blood pressure, reduces pain, and increases life expectancy. While further research is required to understand how these effects work, healthiness and happiness go hand and hand.
Project Success
You’re setting yourself up for success. When you’re happier, you project an air of confidence and you will make wiser decisions. People will want to work with you and for you. Happiness leads to increased cognitive function, improved problem-solving ability, increased memory and retention, higher accuracy and more creativity. Study shows that happiness actually leads to success, not the other way around.
The Happiness Effect
Happiness has a multiplying effect — seeing smiling, happy people is contagious. Without even realizing it, the atmosphere feels lighter and warmer when you’re with a happy person. It even influences those close to you without them realizing. In a TED Talk, Bruce Feiler described a study that asked 1000 kids what they would most want to change about their lives. Their answer? They wished their parents were less stressed. A happy parent is a happy child.
